


do thy bidding

by QueenOfSkaro



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe after the forest, Banter, Forest Scene, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Seventh year, Snippet, grey!Harry, prejudices against the dark, with Voldemort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-19 02:54:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12401619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfSkaro/pseuds/QueenOfSkaro
Summary: Whatever made him think that this has ever been a good idea could just go and fuck itself.





	1. the offer

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing, I just play with J. K.'s wonderful characters. No money is made.
> 
> I haven't seen the movies or read the books in quite a while, so it probably differs a little, but I did tag it AU, so I guess it's fine.

Whatever made him think that this has ever been a good idea could just go and fuck itself.

It’s almost as if this one sentence was a description of his life, or at the very least a description of his Hogwarts years. Maybe he should start blaming the school, or the magic, or just what the fuck ever. He didn’t want to care. Or maybe he was at a point in life when he just wasn’t able to anymore. Caring meant hurting and he was hurting enough.

It was time to get it over with. Just standing here, thinking about it, wasn’t making it any better and he has never been the kind of person to draw things out like bubble gum. He had a plaster kind of thinking. Make it quick and have it over with. Even if over with meant, in this case, death. His, to be precise. As soon as he ripped the plaster off he would be dead. Or in the near vicinity of death, at least.

He had brought the stone with him as a last comfort, for his loved ones farewell and in the hopes that their courage would rub off on him. It didn’t. He felt worse than before, because even if meeting them in death was at last meeting them, it was still – you know – death. He let the stone drop to the forest floor and took a deep breath as soon as they vanished. His lungs filled with the thick forest air, having not been able to breath when they stood before him. It seemed unfair. 

Taking the first step was the hardest thing he did in his entire life, including stealing a dragon’s egg, destroying a horcrux and the horrible kiss with Cho two years ago. 

After the first one it became easier and he soon started to jog the little distance separating him from the clearing that was filled with Death Eaters and their Master. 

They didn’t even notice him for a few seconds. He would have thought they were waiting for him, listening to every strange sound the forest produced. Snape would have taken points from Gryffindor because he was so self-centred that he believed an entire army was waiting solely for him.

They broke their vivid discussion as soon as someone actually did notice him and he was bound a fraction of a second later, lying on the mossy floor with another terrible shortage of breath in his lungs. The bindings wouldn’t only sustain him, they would suffocate him sooner or later. A huffing over his hear was the only warning he got before he was pulled upright by his hair, pulling several strands from his scalp. A wince he couldn’t hide and a loud guffaw from his captor later he was thrown back onto the ground, only a metre away from Voldemort. 

Breath in. Breath in. Breath in. Breath out. He was starting to hyperventilate on the little air he had, gulping it down with a shudder. A fine hero he was. At last none of his friends could see him now.

“Hello Potter.”

There was an amused growl in the familiar voice above him, but he couldn’t get past the wheezing to answer.

“Has no one ever taught you to answer your betters?”

There was no real annoyance in the sentence, as it was obvious why Harry didn’t answer. The Gryffindor held his breath, counted 

four – thirteen – nine – twenty-one

and got a hold on himself.

He pulled his knees under himself as best as he could and drew himself up to meet the crimson gaze of his enemy. And what an enemy he was. Tall, towering over not only him but most of the clearings habitants. Stark white, like the bones you could see through broken skin. Grinning bright to show two rows of pointed teeth, like a shark ready to bite his prey. 

“Was the first thing anyone ever taught me.”

It clearly wasn’t in the realm of expected answers, crimson gaze widening for only a fraction, grin turning sharper. It wasn’t annoyance, it was anger. Harry got good with other peoples’ emotions. He just wasn’t good at responding.

“Indeed. I shouldn’t have expected elsewise from those muggles. Tell me, Potter, did they have you do their bidding?”

Strangely, the anger didn’t seem to be directed at Harry. It was something new, because normally he was at the receiving end of it. Now, he seemed to sit somewhere in between – being the reason, but not the recipient. How odd.

“Why, do you want to know their trick, as it has never worked for you?”

The slight was delivered with a tired grin, taking the edge almost entirely off and the Dark Lord seemed to snort against his will.

“It works now, doesn’t it? You are on your knees before me as I have requested.”

There was a hysterical giggle sitting tightly coiled inside his chest and he tried to hold it in. The strain his nerves were under was enough to have a grown man snapping, but Harry was better than most of them, stronger than most of them. That was what abuse did to you. It weakened you to a whiny, shrivelling shadow of the person you should have become or it steeled you against whatever horrific scenario your imagination could come up with. It probably doesn’t make you a better person, but at least it helped you live in a world full of lies, deceit and murders.

“Kneeling in front of you is doing your bidding, then?”

The hysteria he felt bled out of his mouth, forming words with a wry grin and the giggle dissolved silently, letting him breathe a little better. The binding cut sharply whenever he moved and he leant against the pain, letting it ground him, as he watched his opponents reaction to a public slight. It wasn’t meant as a slight, more as banter, but he wasn’t sure just how good the Dark Lord dealt with banter.

Obviously, he dealt with it far better than expected, Harry decided, as a wheezy laugh filled the clearing, while all the Death Eaters watched in silence with a morbid fascination. 

“It is part of my bidding, little lion.”

There was a moments pause and then, after giving his mind a second to calculate a myriad of possible outcomes, the Dark Lord continued.

“You could stay alive to find out what the rest entails.”


	2. the knowledge

Leaning back, bringing some space between them, was his first reaction. And the staring was his second. He didn’t know what exactly his third or fourth were, but he figured it didn’t matter. Instinct was to put space between them, as much as the fucking rope binding him would allow. 

Instinct was what always got him in trouble. Serious, many times almost-deadly trouble. His instinct wasn’t the most trustworthy thing.

But Harry was smart. Not book smart like Hermione, because old tomes bored him to tears and his knee would start jerking within a minute of starting and his body would thrum with a never-ending pool of energy. But books weren’t the only place to gain knowledge, experience was teaching too. If Harry had anything aplenty it was experience. 

An endless string of experienced abuse from his relatives, of neglect of his muggles teachers and ignorance of the neighbours. He experienced friendship and betrayal and panic and happiness, even though those happy moments were sometimes farfetched, with a whole while in between them. Dark and light magic, both experienced directed at him. Standing with friends against a shared enemy and standing alone against everyone. Now here he stood.

With a bittersweet offer between a Dark Lord and himself, rich of experience and knowledge drawn from it, trying his best to think through air thick of vegetation from the forest, thick with the tension from everyone surrounding him. Thick with a desire to jump on instincts back and be safe in his old ways. Dead in his old ways.

When he stripped the offer of everything meaningful, it was a choice between life and death. Simple as that. Dying with a good heart and a clear conscience, sacrificing himself for the greater good. For whatever good it did in the end, seeing that it wouldn’t really safe his friends in the end when the Dark Lord won. 

Or – or he could live. He would have to fight with his principles to try and find his footing again, bargaining with his guilt in the hopes to have the upper hand at the end. But above all, he would still be alive. Living to regret his decision or living to do good and somehow, anyhow, right all the wrongs everyone kept thrusting at him as if they were his business in the first place. 

“Why would you let me stay alive?”

Asking this was only a caution, trying to buy himself some time, because he noticed the murmurs through the black-clad crowd as moment after moment ticked by without further reaction from him. He righted his upper body against instincts wishes, pulling the bonds in just the right way to extract them a few millimetres from the gashes they already left, red and raw and grounding.

“There is no need to be surprised, Potter. I asked you before to join, did I not?”

The memory this startled was contorted from years of actively not thinking about it. It stood dark on the forefront of his mind, flames licking at the inside of his eyes as the ring of fire burst alive in the room way under Hogwarts where the Philosopher’s stone was hidden. 

It was true, Harry realized. And while Voldemort had lied about bringing his parents back to life, he actually did offer him to switch sides and stand by his side. In the turmoil after it was over and his righteous injuries were cared for and Dumbledore had told him some cryptic half-truths, because children never deserved to know the full truth – he had forgotten.

Had forgotten the only choice anyone has ever bothered to present him.

And while he had respected Dumbledore and mourned him in his death – and still did, always would – he, too, remembered, that he never actually had a choice about anything regarding his life on the light side of the war.

Having dealt with whatever life, Dumbledore or Voldemort threw at him, trying not to drown in pressure, expectations and threat, he never had a chance at choosing his own destiny.

His own destiny would meet him with a held head high and on his own two feet, he decided, as he fought to upright himself, tightening the bonds further in the process. 

“I have conditions.”

A statement that was an answer everyone understood, gathering from the various gasps and mostly hushed whispering picking up behind him.

“Of course you have. Look how surprised I am.”

That was the funniest thing he heard all day, issued from the straight-face snake-man in front of him and Harry snorted like a savage, making the slit-like nose wrinkle disdainfully. It made him chuckle and, at the annoyed look it got him, it grew into a full-blown laugh, making him wheezy and teary eyed from the non-air he squeezed inside his lungs. Just as he was about to issue that, with those bindings of his, he wouldn’t live much longer, they were gone.

Suddenly Harry could draw a deep breath, enough to make himself choke on it and doubling over, shaking. Squeezing his eyes shut, letting the tears flow without a care, he took a few seconds.

eighteen – thirty-two – one – twelve

He righted himself, straightening his spine and returning the scorching, crimson gaze with tearstains on his cheeks and a devil-may-care grin that had his own hackles rising.

“My first condition is peace.”

Guffaws interrupted the shocked silence after only a few seconds, while Harry still stared defiantly into the Dark Lords eyes, waiting for a reaction.

“You always aimed high, I have to grant you that.”

It was pressed through pointed teeth, showing the tension it took him to respond to Harrys audacity.

“I have always only aimed to stay alive and keep as many people as I can with me. That is what I do now, too. Peace is the best way to ensure everyone’s safety.”

“There will be no peace, Potter, until the Light is all but snuffed. We won’t be repressed, discriminated and shunned any longer, I will not stand for it!”

It wasn’t outrage, or anger, or fury Harry saw on the others face. All those things he could have understood, could have countered, but as he saw the bone-deep disappointment he couldn’t help but doubt his request. It was a naïve thing to ask for, he was perfectly able to see that. And he would have withstood anything the Dark Lords fury would have dealt him. In the face of the disappointment, however, he started to think and to question.

And finally, he started to understand.

“You mean dark wizards.”

It was general knowledge that everyone who used dark magic was evil and rotten. And just as the thought hit him, the train of thoughts overwhelmed him.  
It was general knowledge. It was something everyone knew, because it was what everyone said. The whole of the world stood by and lived with a knowledge no one had any proof of.

Dark magic. As much as he fought to fight against it, with tooth and nail and his last drops of spit and blood – he had never questioned it. Dark equalled evil and the evil he must fight against.   
Trying to think of a reasoning anyone may have given him for the bone-deep knowledge the majority of the wizarding world held he came up empty. 

No one had ever given him a reason, a proof, that every dark magic user was evil.

And the thinking wasn’t anything new, it hadn’t started with the first war and Voldemort’s first approach for power. As he thought back to Hermione lecturing him about history of magic he could think of a dozen dark lords, conquered by a light mage. And history was written by the winner, so there was nothing to say about any possible wrongdoings of the light side. 

As ancient history couldn’t be trusted he had to think about his own experiences with dark magic, all dark and troublesome memories. But Dumbledore did show him memories of the former Tom Riddle, of a boy who kept a close circle of chosen acquaintances who shared his way of thinking. It was a small circle, one who had to endure the ridicule of Gryffindor, but with a voice and ways of thinking they stood behind.

Harry suddenly had to think of his own father, who made fun of a boy for practising dark magic, attacking him verbally and magically. Sirius, who may have wanted to get away from a nutcase of a mother, but in the process making sure even his own brother knew that he held no respect whatsoever for him. Remus standing beside it all, being a dark creature himself, but not wanting to get drawn into the focus of his friends.

He thought he was about to retch when he resurfaced from the expedition into his mind, stomach rumbling, his world and everything he thought he knew spinning.

“It’s us.”, he pressed out between paled lips, shocked by the realization of his own blindness. He has lived half his life in abuse, the other half talking fighting against people who thought they knew him but instead just labelling him as whatever they pleased. It made him sick to realize that he wasn’t any better than them.

“You may not know it, for I doubt Dumbledore would have liked you to know, but I did try it in peace. A long time and many life’s ago, I practically lived at the ministry with two dozen plans to better the future for us, to bring us on equal ground. But no one wanted to listen to reason, to proof refuting some of their so-called knowledge about dark magic.”

There was a pregnant pause in which Harry tried to twist this around everything he thought he knew about Voldemort and somehow it fit in quite effortlessly. He believed him and, unlike almost every conversation he held with Dumbledore, he didn’t doubt a thing he was told. The truth tasted like salt and coal and burnt down his throat.

“I gave the light up as hopeless after witnessing a trial of a man who murdered his wife and their four children, drying them out over the span of three days, using the Tergeo-spell. He was sentenced to five years in Azkaban with minimum security under alleviated circumstances, for he didn’t use any dark curse. He can’t be that bad if he is purely light-sided.”

The disgust wasn’t only on Voldemort’s face and in his voice. Harry could feel it crawling up his legs, his arms, winding around his windpipe and drilling into his ears. He felt it anchoring in his brain, overshadowing everything else he was so sure was reality. In a slow, stilted movement he stumbled to the side, retching up bile and prejudices he believed for years.

It was sad, so terribly, heart-breakingly sad, that he didn’t question anything about the story for even a second, because Harry knew how corrupt and shifted the justice was in the wizarding world. Fairness couldn’t be found anywhere near the ministry, he had experienced that for himself.

It took him long minutes to gather the needed strength to stand up again, to face the Dark Lord and a crowd of wild stares. 

“Maybe you lot actually are evil. People who do evil things have to be evil on some degree. But we made you like this through an eternity of suppression and it’s not fair not to admit to it.”

Wobbly steps on uncertain footing brought him standing next to Voldemort, in front of at least a hundred Death Eaters.

“I will start.”

His brain seemed to shudder under the force to keep working with this newfound onslaught of memories he misinterpreted, of him being a short-sighted, narrow-minded asshole, of him being lied to. He thought about Draco who stayed in the castle, of their shared fight to save their life’s.

“I don’t think that dark magic automatically makes you evil. It’s what you do with it that makes you, defines you. As it does with light wizards too. Everyone should stand up to their consequences. The magic we use shouldn’t make a murder anything less than it is, shouldn’t reduce a life to anything less than it was.”

His voice grew steadier the more he spoke, took on his usual fierceness for everything he believed in, let it reverberate through everyone listening. He turned around looking at the Dark Lord.

“I will make sure that peace is an option. No suppression of one side, but a world where everyone has a place in.”

As his words glided over the crowd and everyone tried to wrap their heads around the fact that Harry fucking Potter was, obviously, now fighting with them, a green gaze found crimson eyes, held them and drew strength from them.

They could fight. And they could win.


End file.
